"Researchers in Germany have nowadays access to confidential micro data compiled from official statistics in a way that could not have been dreamt of just a few years ago. This paper describes the new institutions that grant data access - most importantly the research data centers located inside...

Using data from the social survey ALLBUS for West Germany in the period 1980 to 2006, this paper demonstrates that union members are on average older than non-unionized employees. The probability of being unionized shows the inverted U-shaped pattern in age conjectured by Blanchflower (BJIR...